A government in collapse. A world up for grabs. Millions of lives in the balance. And a mountain of cash for those brave, skilled, or crazy enough to take it. The work is usually difficult, often dirty, and always dangerous. If being a mercenary was easy, everyone would do it.
EPISODE I: BORN TO LOSE
PREMISE:
The year is 3030, and Gawain’s Green Knights, a small mercenary command operating in the contentious Andurien region of the Inner Sphere, have found themselves in a situation. Originally under contract with the Capellan Confederation, they had been hired for garrison duty on the backwater border world of Espia, keeping the peace while the regular Capellan forces moved off-world to fight their hated enemies in the Federated Suns. It should have been easy money, chasing off bandits and looking good for photo opportunities while the local governor signed over fat stacks of cash until the regulars returned from the fighting.
Unfortunately for the Green Knights, things didn’t turn out that way. The Capellan Confederation lost their fight with the Federated Suns, and lost badly. While reeling from their disastrous war, the Capellan government withdrew its support from several border worlds, leaving Espia to twist in the wind. This resulted in protests, protests which became riots, riots which became a military coup. The new regime managed to seize most of the world’s military and economic assets….including the Green Knights’ Dropship, and the several million C-Bills the mercenaries were promised. Despite the local military seizing power, things continued to spiral out of control, erupting into a full-on civil war.
Now Gawain’s Green Knights are stuck without an employer, without a paycheck, and without a way off-planet. Between fanatical Capellan loyalists, opportunistic agents of the neighboring Free Worlds League, and radical Independents, the world is embroiled in a civil war which threatens to leave the entire planet in ruins. In the middle of this, Colonel Gaius Wayne and his band of mercenaries have to find a way out, either by finding the right client and rallying around their cause, or by grabbing enough loot in the chaos to pay for passage out of the system.
Whether they choose to fight for a higher cause, for the downtrodden caught up in the crossfire like them, for the money, or for each other, the only way out for the Green Knights is to fight their way through it. What remains to be seen is if they’ll still manage to get the money they were owed….or if any of them will be alive to spend it.
ABOUT THE GAME:
Disposable Heroes is an episodic sci-fi military roleplaying game set in the Battletech/Mechwarrior universe. Players will not need to be familiar with the wider lore of the setting in order to play, as the majority of the action will take place on a single locale (for this episode, the planet Espia), and details of the various factions and the broader history of the setting will be explained if and when they become relevant.
Players will be allowed up to two characters, playing the roles of Mechwarriors, tank commanders, aerospace fighter or helicopter pilots, infantry squad leaders, or other members of Gawain’s Green Knights. If players wish, their secondary character can be a member of one of the opposing factions. In this case, PvP is allowed (and encouraged). However, killing another player’s character or destroying their vehicle is prohibited unless both players agree on it beforehand.
The GM and AGM, playing the roles of Colonel Gaius Wayne and of the opposing forces, will provide mission objectives and general orders, as well as describe enemy actions and give the occasional nudge to keep the plot moving. In general, these orders will be very hands-off, allowing the players more or less free rein over how they carry these missions out. In addition, the GMs will play the role of referee, enforcing the usual Guild rules and mitigating any conflicts that may arise, and determining how much the general lore is allowed to stretch and bend without breaking it.
ABOUT THE SETTING:
The Battletech universe is equal parts action-packed heroic pulp fiction, gritty hard-nosed war drama, grand sweeping space opera, and cloak-and-dagger political thriller. While the larger interstellar factions of the 31st Century are usually morally gray, each side has plenty of genuine heroes and villains to go around, and the conflict of characters is often just as important as the clash between Great Houses and their awesome mechanized armies.
The primary factions in the setting at large are the five Successor States, each ruled by a noble Great House which espouses an old-world culture: the Federated Suns (House Davion, primarily English), the Draconis Combine (House Kurita, primarily Japanese), the Lyran Commonwealth (House Steiner, primarily German), the Capellan Confederation (House Liao, primarily Chinese), and the Free Worlds League (House Marik, primarily Austro-Hungarian). Collectively, the Successor States and the worlds they occupy are known as the Inner Sphere. These states are mono-cultural, but multi-ethnic, meaning that a citizen of the Draconis Combine, for instance, could be of Asian descent or white or black or Middle Eastern or any number of other ethnicities, but would always be expected to speak and read/write Japanese and understand the tenets of traditional Japanese culture out of loyalty to the ruling Kurita family.
In between these huge interstellar empires and their constant battles are a number of smaller states known as the Periphery, shadowy organizations such as ComStar (who own the only existing technology allowing for interstellar communications), and countless mercenary companies that do whatever jobs these larger powers are willing to pay for. Mercenary commands can range from massive professional armies with enough skill and firepower to rival a Great House, to solo freelancers or tiny outfits that are little more than a pirate band with delusions of legitimacy.
After hundreds of years of unrestrained total warfare, the massive armies of the Great Houses have dwindled, the apocalyptic fleets of Warships have faded into distant memory, and both political expediency and strained resources have limited most conflict to the terrestrial battlefield. And in this theater of small-scale land-based combat, the Battlemech is king. As such, Mechwarriors are often held up as the new knights of the 31st Century, since they wield tremendous power that takes incredible skill and years of experience to master. Mechwarriors often have bombastic personalities, are prone to competitiveness, and will develop rivalries that can last lifetimes (lifetimes that are, just as often as not, cut spectacularly short),
The tone, aesthetic, and technology level of the Battletech/Mechwarrior universe can best be described as “mud and lasers.” Fantastical technology like faster-than-light travel and 20-meter-tall Battlemechs exist and are the focal points of most stories, but other common sci-fi staples such as aliens, nano-machines, and artificial intelligence either don’t exist at all, have been lost due to centuries of brutal warfare, or are simply too expensive and impractical to use. Computers are often bulky and slow, data is stored and carried in physical media like floppy discs and tapes, and hacking an enemy computer requires you to physically plug into it since the 31st Century equivalent of the internet is primitive and basic. In short, it’s the future, but it’s the 80s future.
TL;DR: take the hot-shot fighter pilots from Top Gun, the lo-fi cassette-futurism of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, and the Machiavelian intrigue of Game of Thrones, and you’ve more or less got Mechwarrior.
4x Like
